draftspotforwritingthings

[draftspotforwritingthings]

Feeling a moment of peace, perhaps fueled by some caffeine and plenty of sunshine. Feeling intensely grateful for the blueness of the sky and the conditions of this work week that have let me indulge in so much idle time.

Feeling relief from some difficult emotions the first few days of this week, returning from a demanding travel schedule and still unpacking the suitcases of unwashed clothes I've been living out of for the past few weeks. Feeling the bite of social isolation and shame and unworthiness come back now that I can no longer outsource the work of maintaining connection to people whose company I seek to Leo.

Speaking of Leo...had some difficult conversations with him about money. These conversations exposed some holes or inefficiencies in his money management, but perhaps more importantly, exposed the projection of my financial anxiety onto him. This anxiety doesn't seem to be entirely accommodated by my careful management of savings and investments. Despite all my attempts at numbing and justifications, my career is unfulfilling and I'd like to take a more proactive stance in deciding the effect it has on my life and how I'd like to change that.

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It's been a few weeks since my last...practice session, should we call it? I met a culture writer yesterday (fascinating!!) and recalled my ambitions to getting published. But what do I want to say?

I've been occupied with transitioning to being in Hong Kong, sharing a living space with my lover, and immersing myself in the mundane pleasures of this city while sustaining my cushy tech job. The feelings I've been experiencing lately...the luxury of sitting in the disorientation of the mornings without tending to the urgency of pretending to work, the deliciousness and accessibility of food perfectly suited to my palate (cultural palate?), the proximity to nature, a diverse and resilient ecosystem of public services, and to a rich commercial hub of endless consumer delights.

Things I long for -- political intimacy, the company of people that share my aspirations and cultural point of view. More autonomy.

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How do I start to cultivate my desire for the work I get paid to do?

I'd like to be able to sit at my desk, calm, in control. I'd like to know that my skills are useful and necessary. I'd like to be able to take on tasks with more independence. More than wanting to know what I'm doing, I want to be someone that knows what she's doing.

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I want to give myself time to pine for Hong Kong and Japan.

I want to cultivate my desire for the fullness of my life in this moment.

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What if things were easy?

What could I achieve if everything didn't feel so difficult?

I can feel my body starting to register some of the typical effects of the first day of my menstrual cycle. Cramps in my lower body. I wonder if I'm getting enough nutrition. I'm always wishing my apartment were cleaner. I wish I could play Rachmaninoff again. I wish my body were stronger, limber, faster, more resilient. I wish I dressed better. I wish my Chinese was better. I wish my Japanese better. I wish I could casually, easily involved in the lives of more friends, their children, their worlds. I wish to be more immersed in the immediate present. I find I'm constantly running away from uncomfortable feelings, and then I run away from confronting the consequences of running away. The shame compounds, and I sink deeper into self-doubt.

Why does letting annoyance go feel so difficult? What would happen if I could just let these shameful feelings drift away? What if celebrating was easy?

I'd be so grateful to myself for writing up the post for my apartment and taking photos before I left to go see my mom for the holidays. I'd appreciate myself so much more for all the effort and emotional energy I expended to spend more time with mom, bond with her, learn about her life, her past. I'm glad I started a practice of telling her how much I appreciate every single one of her gestures of love, always cleaning up and cooking for me, always thinking of me, always accommodating me. I'm grateful to myself for taking more photos together, for recording the meals she prepares for me so painstakingly. For biting my tongue and watching my own reactions when her judgments and passive digs start to sting. For regularly bringing myself into nature to make room for the bliss of the sun, the sky, the greenery.

I'm grateful to myself for the budding awareness of my period on my emotional volatility.

Anger --> dismissal of anger.

What if things were easy?

What if things were easy?

What if things were easy?

I'd let the pain my body is experiencing flow through me.

I'd know what to do to justify contributing to work today.

I'd file my expenses.

I'd rebalance my investments.

I'd plan things with friends.

-- Ok, just sent out a few texts. The only thing that makes it stressful is my feelings about it. Breathe.

What if things were easy?

I'd plan to go to the gym later.

I wouldn't stress about choosing between rest and "productivity".

I want to mop, prepare for tomorrow's work day, exercise, and relax.

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If I'm going to be radically honest with myself about my desires...

The things that I want to want are not the things I want. There's a gap to be closed there, for the force of want to propel me in the direction I want myself to go towards.

What do I mean when I say the things I want to want are not the same as the things as I want? If I take a candid inventory of how I spend my time and money, I am most concerned with drowning out my anxiety with the incessant consumption of media, to the point of making myself feel sick with guilt or numbness. I'm concerned with the opinions of a select few people in my life to project my insecurities onto. I get caught up in the drama of political disagreements.

What are things I want to want? A change in my living conditions. More trees. More care. More sustainability. Brightness, joy, life.

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One realization from a first few passes at Ramit's "Rich Life" journal is how difficult I find imagining what a "dream life" could look like in 5, 10, or 20 years. I feel too rooted, too embedded in the parameters of my current reality to let my dreams roam uninhibited.

I'm realizing that in many ways, I'm already living my dreams. It's pretty incredible how much I'm able to travel. I'm lucky to be able to slack off so much and comfortably afford my lifestyle in one of the most expensive cities in the world. I don't spend enough time appreciating all the things I have, all the experiences I've been able to accumulate, all the relationships that I've gotten to built over my lifetime so far. My attention immediately goes to the sources of "lacking", of "not enough", which are really just constructs of my upbringing around what "should be". I want to live in the realm of what could be -- and I know that if I could just see the vision of what I'm pursuing with more clarity, the things I've been waiting to fall into place will happen naturally.

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Every work day, a similar cycle. Can't seem to pull myself out of bed until right before my first morning meeting, where I'm wracked with guilt and panic at the task of improvising some jibberish about the previous day's work. I distract myself with hours of tik toks and social media after, become aware of the need to feed myself, fumble about in the kitchen until I'm able to put together some semblance of a meal, then take a brief walk (oftentimes my greatest source of daily joy and release). Hit with a wave of panic after my walk to compensate for the hours I've been slacking off, I get in an hour or two of work, maybe attend an afternoon meeting. Relief when it's time to log off.

I don't want to ride this rollercoaster of procrastination, self-hatred, anxiety anymore. I despise my relationship to my job and my inability to maintain a sense of control or self-efficacy about my label as a "software engineer". Really, I just want to work on crafty projects and read books of essays on radical feminism. I don't even want to compost. I just have no idea how to individually contribute to a vision of society I want humankind to collectively strive towards.

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Wow that was quite the dramatic expression of intensity earlier. I am now fed and stoned. Still anxious about the phantom pressure of work (reading about Design Patterns).

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These past few days my body has felt WRACKED with the TENDER RESONANCES of EMOTION. Am I on the verge of another mental breakdown or is it just my period?? I'm almost 30 and my body is still a mystery to me. I've felt uneasy and restless all day. I feel incapable of releasing the constant sensation of urgency that lives as a weight on my chest, compelling my attention to jump from task to task with the incessant grip of emergency.

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I realize I've been projecting my desire to dream more vividly, expansively, imaginatively, on my mother. If she dreamed bigger while raising me, would I have learned to hope for a life outside the trappings of duty and responsibility? Would I have dared to expose my "authentic self", with all her ugly, untempered emotions, to the external world? Would I have found a path that bypassed the state of desperate loneliness I seem to always return to? Would I be able to release my fatalism and fall into an infinite trance of joy, connection, creativity, expressiveness? What could I have achieved, if I hadn't been burdened with the task of unlearning the shame of a woman's role, always leashed by outdated notions of respectability, restraint, propriety.

I don't know. I resent the reality in adulthood, the responsibility lies on myself to find the path I wish I had been guided to as a child. I'm scared. I'm fearful. I'm trying.

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2022

get more specific about the ways i'd like to give back + affect change

exercise

write

clean

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reading through the writer course material about pitching ideas and feeling the tension of anxiety pulse through my chest. also quite stressed about being on the clock at work.

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is it adhd that causes me to feel constantly overwhelmed at the magnitude of my own curiosity? an endless list of books to read, languages to master, subjects to study, movies and manga and anime and television to consume and analyze and experience.

currently:

mo dao zu shi (lol)

the tragedy of heterosexuality

erica kanesaka's cute studies syllabus

writing course i bought recently (which spurred my return to tumblr)

more erotica/fanfic? https://archiveofourown.org/

want to read the entire catalog of chao yang trap

andrea dworkin

leftover women

betraying big brother

basically any book i can find on chinese feminism

how far the light reaches

vagina obscura

poetry: victoria chang, mahmoud darwish...

spirituality: eckhart tolle (a new earth), wherever you go there you are (therapist recs lol)

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first tumblr post in years! this is a place to collect my thoughts and attempts at writing. awash with a sense of liberation at the novelty of starting something totally anew (new? anew?) under the covery of anonymity.